How to build a free Whisper API with GPU backend

Developers are increasingly integrating Speech AI into their applications for modern user experiences. Whisper is an open-source model that offers Speech-to-Text capabilities, making it a popular choice among developers. However, using large Whisper models on CPU can be slow, and many developers lack the necessary GPU resources at home. This article provides a tutorial on building a free, GPU-powered Whisper API to overcome these issues. The technique involves leveraging Google Colab's free GPUs and creating a Flask API that serves an endpoint for transcription. By using ngrok as a proxy, developers can access the API from various sources such as Python scripts or frontend applications.